Tuesday, July 02, 2013

This is a new engraving but it has had a long gestation. On my daily walks I can look out across a meadow and see an old owl house. It is tilted at a strange angle and is falling apart but I rather like it. I have thought about making an engraving of it for years but I could never quite see it.

Earlier this year I was leaning on a gate, looking at the same meadow when I saw a barn owl hunting. I love to watch this - the quiet beauty and power of these birds is wonderful. As the bird moved around the meadow, I could clearly see the old Owl house in the trees beyond the meadow and the view started to make sense as an image. Sometimes I just see something as an engraving.

That was several months ago and it was only recently that I was able to set commissioned work aside for a week and concentrate on this project. I had a suitable woodblock in the studio:

I worked from a very rough sketch - just enough to give me the composition. I decided to do the work from memory, based on careful observation of the view on my walks.

The only part that I planned more carefully was the owl. I have made many sketches over the years:

I decided to start by engraving the wings, building up the texture of the feathers by cutting lines over a pattern of dots:

The owl slowly took shape:

The medieval cathedral of Ely is an essential part of the image. I started to define its characteristic shape:

Then it was time to sketch in the owl house and the surrounding bushes:

Next, I engraved the trees behind the meadow. Every one would have different marks to make sure that each tree had its own character. Here is a small ash:

The tree textures are very fine and wouldn't really become visible until the block was proofed.

I gave my attention to the sky. I often feature a pair of birds; it is something of a signature of mine. In this engraving, I decided to feature swallows as I usually see them flying over the same meadow at this time of year.

I gradually built up the texture of the clouds - cutting in two different directions, which contrasted well with the quiet parallel lines of the darker clear sky:

When I had taken the sky as far as I could, I worked on the foreground. Among the meadow grasses were Queen Anne's Lace. I decided to engrave the flowers from life:

Here is the engraved block, ready to proof:

Proofing went very smoothly and the image needed little adjustment. It was a pleasure to start the edition. The finished engraving is very much what I had in mind when I first watched the owl hunting.

Here is the finished engraving:

It will be exhibited for the first time at Guildford and available from my Open Studio (see previous post for details). It can be purchased HERE at a pre-publication price for one week.

Postscript:

This engraving has just been accepted for the 76th Society Of Wood Engraver's annual touring show. This starts at Art Jericho,
Oxford (Private View at 5pm on Saturday, September 14th).